US Data Roaming

[lulungyan]

Hello,

I added the $20 1 GB US data roaming package and $20 250 MB Talk + Text US roaming package last week while I was in the US and could not get reliable data. I was in the San Francisco area and mostly got 2G/EDGE which was way to slow to do anything on. Sometimes I would get a bar of 3G but never sustained. I used this add-on in SF in February of 2022 without issue with the same phone, an iPhone X. I restarted my phone numerous times. Has anyone else experienced this or know of a solution? Thanks.

[darlicious]

@LouAnne2 

There are two issues in Alaska one being it's such a large state that is under populated and still a very wild frontier land that there is only coverage in populated areas and along a couple of highway corridors and is very hit and miss with coverage in that aspect. So you can't expect good coverage if at all when you're traveling around it's a bit of luck of the draw.

Additionally there seems to be in general a problem with connecting to AT&t both in Alaska and the lower 48. We as customers are only ferretng out that problem at the moment and there's been no official word from public mobile.

You can contact customer support and ask for a credit to your account for the value of the US roaming add-on that you purchased. It doesn't really matter what you bought talk text or data or all three it's pretty much unusable in Alaska at the moment. Customer support is aware of this part of the problem and you shouldn't have any issue getting a credit to your account.

If you are in Alaska for a while and need cellular service I would recommend you get a local SIM card from the state specific GCI the Alaskan mobile provider that most other US networks have a roaming agreement with other than the exception of AT&t which has their own network there. But GCI still has better coverage than AT&t in Alaska.

[softech]

@LouAnne2   Yup, Alaska, there have been quiet some reports that Alaska is a black hole, roaming does not work well there.  And you need voice roaming?  We can only use T-Mobile 2G network for voice but there is no real T-Mobile coverage in Alaska.

[LouAnne2]

Well at least u got something,  I get nothing here in Alaska 

[darlicious]

@Community_QA 

Why would you use 2G for data? T-Mobile has 4G LTE service for data and texts and if you're in an area that is serviced by the 2G network and you get a voice call or you need to make a voice call your phone will automatically drop down to 2G to allow the voice call to connect.

[computergeek541]

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@Community_QA wrote:

Any news if PM will offer VoLTE this year?

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Public Mobile has not provided any official information.

[Community_QA]

@lulungyan  T-Mobile 2G network is not very useful for data.  But I heard you have no choice if you have voice.

AT&T were more stables when I was there last time.  But AT&T LTE won't  give you voice

Any news if PM will offer VoLTE this year?

[darlicious]

@lulungyan 

Did you have your phone set to 3G/2G only? There should have been no issues getting 4G LTE. Did you manually choose T-Mobile? Or did you have it set to the automatic network setting where it may have been switching back and forth between T-Mobile and AT&t? If you were getting 3G and 2G you would have been on T-Mobile as AT&t only has 5G and 4G LTE however there have been many reports of difficulty connecting to AT&t in many different states and there is a suspicion that there is a problem with roaming partner service for public mobile and possibly koodo as well.

Edit:

Use the link supplied by @Dunkman to read more info on US Roaming....I personally know the author. I trust their word.😃

[Timer]

@lulungyan 

Manually select network T-mobile, how to >  Manual Connections & Network

and rebooting device. 

[Dunkman]

@lulungyan 

The issue with Public mobile US roaming at the present time is the decommissioning of 3G Networks in the USA.  Public mobile uses AT&T and T mobile as their US partner carriers.  AT&T already phased out 3G network earlier this year. T mobile 's date was July 1.  It may take time for the different areas in USA to decommissioned. 

According to Public mobile,

PM will have T mobile 2G network for US roaming.

Voice and SMS text will still work. 

Data will work on LTE, but will switch over to 2G to make a call. 

However, the quality of service will vary depending on the different coverage areas when roaming in the USA.

Public mobile is working on a long term solution, but that will take time. voLTE hopefully will be implemented by the end of the year.

Here is some more info:

https://www.publicmobile.ca/en/on/get-help/articles/us-roaming

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Get-Support/US-Roaming-Add-ons-Decommissioning-of-US-...

If you had major issues (ie, unusable service), you could contact customer service agent for some remedy.  Possible credit to your account YMMV.  Until voLTE is implemented, USA roaming will be unpredictable depending on your specific location.  

[Outdoorsman · Accepted solution]

@lulungyan contact a cs agent for a refund 

There are two ways to contact a customer service agent , open a ticket through Simon here https://publicmobile.ca

Or  private message them here

      https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/notes/composepage/note-to-user